This is a class blog run by Dr. Carolina Acosta-Alzuru and her students in the course "Telenovelas, Culture & Society" at the University of Georgia during Fall 2015

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Projac, and Globo's world of telenovelas

Hey amigos,

For this post, I decided to focus on Globo's Central of Production and some other interesting things about production in Brazil.

Projac, short for Jacarepagua Project, also known as Globo's Central of Production (CGP), is the center of production of Rede Globo, located in Rio de Janeiro. Opened in 1995, with total area of 400,000 square meters.
The old studio of Rede Globo, opened in 1965, became too small for the issuing productions. Then, in 1980, they realized that the station's facilities would be soon inappropriate . It was when Globo decided to design Projac, to house the studios, administration, production and direction. The time between Projac's conception and the inauguration took nearly fifteen years to complete. - according the Globo website.
Currently, there are seventeen recording studios there with the telenovela's fictional cities,a factory for settings and the house used for Big Brother Brazil. Projac is like a small town with three snack bars, a restaurant, and a bank for its employees.

For me, a visit to Projac would be as cool as going to Disney. However, one needs to be invited by someone who works at Globo to actually visit Projac :(
Thinking of all people who would love to visit Globo's world, the network created a virtual project, on which fans can visit, even remotely, the headquarters of Projac. This project is called Welcome to Projac, and it features 360 degrees photos showing of places where various stages of production programs are held , such as sewing workshop and factory of scenarios . The online project includes monthly updates.
On the tour, Brazilian telenovelas celebrities appear like cardboard displays to show the places in Projac to the virtual visitor.
You can try a visit by clicking on the link below. Just press começar. :)http://especial.projac.redeglobo.globo.com/web.html

Video Show - a whole show dedicated to Globo's production!Other than visiting Projac in the online tour, fans of telenovelas can actually engage in watching Video Show and see some details of production. Video Show is broadcast by Rede Globo from Monday through Friday,in the afternoon. The show displays news and curiosities from the Globo television world and everything that happens behind the scenes of telenovelas and other shows in the network.

Below there is a video showing the making-of of a Avenida Brasil's accident scene.

The show also presents live interviews with actors, host competions among different telenovelas' casts and has a funny part called Falha Nossa, on which they show shooting mistakes on telenovelas scenes. Here you can see some mistakes of O Clone:

A Regra do Jogo - Caixa CênicaTo finish my post, I'd like to focus on a detail of the production in my lovely telenovela, A regra do Jogo. In this telenovela the director Amora Mautner introduced a high quality production technique, called “caixa cênica” (scenic box), which shows closer picture scenes as the ones seen in the reality show genre. The caixa cênica, is composed by hidden cameras which are spread in the sets, in order of showing scenes from different angles. You can see a video here:

"Você não sabe onde está a camera, então você não vai se posicionar para a camêra". - You do not know where the camera is, then you will not stand towards the camera.- That sentence said by actress Vanessa Giácomo in the video above explains exactly how caixa cenica works for actors. Amora Mautner explains that the concept of scenic box is a setting on which actors are free to act - without worrying about scene markings. I particularly think it is a very interesting idea because we can see other details on the set. Now, I am a spoiled viewer. I don't like when the telenovela focus on close-ups. It annoys me. hahaha

2 comments:

Wow, I am getting more interested in Globo by the minute. It is so fascinating to me what a big player they are and that they mounted all this mainly for telenovelas! Also I think it is beautiful how they try to connect the audience really to the whole thing and not just to the telenovela. They can get attached to globo and „video show“ shows them all the people who also belong to a telenovela, not just the actors. Thank you providing so much background info. Also on a sidetone about your telenovela. I showed the marriage proposal scene of Juliano e Toia yesterday to my roommate who is American and does not speak a word of Spanish or Portuguese and she nearly cried. That’s how universally appealing telenovelas are, even the grittier ones like A Regra do Jogo. :)

Oi Lisinha, Yeah, right? Globo is a big player is the world of telenovelas, and they sure know how to engage the audience. On the other hand, they can be big snobs too. They even had an award show every year - troféu melhores do ano - and only Globo's people can get the awards. They simply ignore the other networks. Anyways, I'm glad I could bring you some new information. It's always a pleasure to me to talk about our "novelas'.Hahaha Show your friend some of Nina and Jorginho. She will be hooked to Avenida Brasil instantly.